


Deer Camp

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Series: A Combination Of Skill And Luck [11]
Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Despite the whump tag this fic is not really angsty like. at all believe it or not, Friends to Lovers, Huddling For Warmth, Hypothermia, Ignores Season 3, M/M, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25099108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: “Uh, you’re gonna hate this, but the fire by itself won’t be good enough.”“Why, what else will you need?”“Body heat from another person.”“I see.”“And clothes just get in the way of the heat exchange.”“…I see,” Dale repeats. “That stands to reason.”“I’m sorry, Coop.”“No, don’t be. I don’t fault you for desiring to be warm and I’ll do my best to make it happen,” he promises.
Relationships: Dale Cooper/Harry Truman
Series: A Combination Of Skill And Luck [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617793
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	Deer Camp

“Okay, Coop… here’s everything you did wrong,” Harry chuckles, looking him over.

Dale doesn’t understand. “Excuse me?”

“You’re wearing hiking boots that are made for summer, first of all,” his friend starts. “They don’t look waterproof at all. You’re wearing blue jeans.”

“I have thermals under them,” Dale protests.

“That’s good, let me finish. Okay. So you’re wearing blue jeans. That’s a _huge_ mistake and we’ll come back to it in a second. That coat’s not heavy enough, it’s clearly meant for fall.”

“It _is_ fall!” Dale insists, frustrated.

“Yeah, technically it is,” Harry nods. “But it’s definitely actually winter. There’s a foot of snow outside and all the leaves are gone. I don’t know how winter works in Philly, Coop, but here in Washington it pretty much starts at the beginning of November and doesn’t end until April. Anyway… what’re you wearing under that jacket?”

Dale pulls it off. “Presumably you’re now going to critique my choice of shirts.”

“Yeah, I am. Is that a cotton flannel or a wool flannel?”

“Cotton.”

“And underneath it?”

“A thermal shirt.”

“What kinda socks are you wearing?”

“My usual ones…”

Harry sighs and shakes his head. “Coop… weren’t you a boy scout as a kid?”

“Yes, why?”

“Didn’t they ever teach you that cotton kills?” Harry steps into Dale’s personal space and plucks his shirt collar. “The long johns are just about the only thing you did right. You want wool, Gore Tex. Warm and waterproof. And a damn hat, why don’t you have a hat?”

“Will I have to return home and acquire better clothing?”

“No, actually, because I’ve got extras, but next time you better do it right,” Harry scolds.

“And my boots?”

“I have some’a those for you, too. Alright, strip, I’ll go grab everything.”

Dale removes the majority of his clothing and folds it neatly into a pile, then stands barefoot in his thermal underwear while Harry retrieves the appropriate attire for him. Pants which aren’t jeans, a wool flannel shirt, wool socks, three-fingered mittens, a shell of jacket and pants made of a green synthetic material, and a trapper’s hat with flaps that can tie under his chin. Finally, winter boots. Dale dresses in Harry’s clothes, which are just slightly too big for him, and is relatively unsurprised to find that the boots fit comfortably - they have extremely similarly-sized feet. He’s concerned that this hat will disturb his hairstyle.

Now dressed identically except that Harry’s flap-hat is blue instead of black, they collect their guns and go outside. They’re at the very end of the general season for deer, but apparently Harry prefers this because there aren’t as many other hunters out and he’s much less likely to be accidentally shot by one. As someone who has been shot, Dale can perfectly understand the desire to avoid it.

The forest is quiet around them aside from the trees occasionally creaking. There’s snow falling, but it’s light, unintrusive. Harry seems very in his element out here, softly advancing into the wilderness cradling a scoped deer rifle with snowflakes occasionally landing on his eyebrows. It’s peaceful and picturesque and in no way helps the schoolboy crush Dale has on his friend.

They walk together for some time in companionable silence. Dale is immensely thankful that his time off from the Bureau was approved for this hunting trip, because this is looking to be a very enjoyable experience even if they aren’t able to bag a deer.

Dale is snug in a cocoon of Harry’s winter clothes even though his breath steams in front of his face. He makes a mental note to purchase a similar set of Gore Tex coverings for himself upon his return home to Twin Peaks. Of course, there is something to be said for being wrapped in borrowed apparel, warmth and comfort and the faint hint of another man’s smell all around him. He wonders if this calm and isolated environment would be appropriate for him to make a pass at Harry. He’d certainly like to…

“Warm enough?” Harry asks.

“Oh, yes.”

“Good.” That familiar, kind smile does things to him. “The snow would be melting into your blue jeans right now and you’d be miserable as hell if we’d come out with you dressed like that.”

“Alright, Harry,” Dale cedes, failing not to smile back. “You know what you’re talking about and I trust you.”

“I’ve been doing this since I was a little kid,” Harry comments. “Sometimes my brother comes up and goes on a trip with me, but he couldn’t this year becau…” He trails off and stops walking. “Look at that, Coop.” He points with the trigger finger of his mitten to a line of big tracks. “You know what that is?”

“What?”

“A moose.”

“Oh, are you allowed to hunt moose?”

“Yeah… well, _I_ am, because I have a special permit. They’re hard to get, though.”

“The moose or the permit?”

“Both.” Harry starts to grin. “We might bag a moose today, Coop.”

“Do they taste good?”

“Yeah, usually. I’ve only had moose a couple times.”

They begin following the moose trail. Occasionally other animal footprints cross their chosen path, which Harry will point out for Dale’s benefit… snowshoe rabbit, coyote, fox. (“Are there bears?” “Yeah, but they’re all asleep right now, you won’t see any this time’a year.”)

“More coyote tracks,” Dale points out. “I heard there’s a bounty on them because they’re an invasive species.”

“There is, and they are,” Harry confirms. “But those aren’t coyote tracks. That’s a wolf.”

“I thought they were eradicated in this area.”

“They’ve been coming back, a lot of them migrate from Canada. That’s good, though. They’re endangered, you can’t kill them.”

“Even if you’re attacked by one?”

“Coop, I promise you’re not gonna actually get to see one. They’re scared of people and there’s way easier food to catch than us. Besides, most of the time, they’re up in the evening. They’re gonna stay right away from us.”

Dale feels mildly disappointed, wolves are fascinating animals and he would like to see one someday. On the other hand, he would also like to avoid contracting rabies, so avoiding local wolf populations is a prudent step to ensuring his own safety.

They continue tracking the moose. Dale has pursued dangerous creatures while holding a weapon before, but always in the interest of upholding the law. He’s normally concerned with being maimed or killed by another human being. Now, he’s with Harry, potentially bearing down on a food source, and it’s a strange, comfortable feeling. Fresh meat, in high quantity, which Harry will teach him how to cook.

A narrow break in the trees, approximately fifteen feet across - it’s a smooth stretch of snow, occasionally breached by a rock poking up. A frozen stream. The moose tracks cross it, starting to fill in from the fresh precipitation that’s lazily drifting down from the clouds.

“Is it safe?” Dale asks.

“Probably… it’s been real cold the past few days. Besides, if it can hold up a _moose,_ it can definitely take our weight. C’mon.”

Harry starts to walk forward onto the ice but Dale remains at the edge. He feels spooked.

“Harry, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Coop, a moose weighs about a thousand pounds. I’m a hundred and seventy six. It’s fine.”

Which makes it all the more horribly ironic that less than a second passes between the end of that sentence and Harry plunging down as the ice under his feet lets go.

“HARRY!” Dale shouts, even though it doesn’t do either of them any good.

Recalling a random fact that he read in his youth, he crawls on his stomach to the breach and helps Harry struggle back out again. His friend rolls sideways to move further away from the hole, soaked through and coughing. They crawl back to safety.

“Shit!” Harry yells, still hacking and spitting. “I dropped my gun in there!”

“Harry-”

“Sonuva _bitch!_ ” He flings his hat and mittens down so he can wipe his face with his hands. “I liked that gun, too, it has a really nice scope…”

“Harry, we need to go back to your camp before you freeze,” Dale orders. “We can worry about the rifle later.”

“Yeah.”

They follow their own footprints through the trees, walking much faster than they did on the way in.

“How can I get you warm again once we’re there?”

“Have to get dry first,” Harry says, obviously spending some effort to talk clearly through his chattering jaw. “You know how to make a fire, Coop?”

“Yes, I can build one.”

“Okay. Good. Uh. So you’ll do that while I dry off… and put a blanket on the floor next to the fireplace. So I can lay down on it.” Harry stops talking for a second and a particularly violent shudder wracks his frame. “Uh, you’re gonna hate this, but the fire by itself won’t be good enough.”

“Why, what else will you need?”

“Body heat from another person.”

“I see.”

“And clothes just get in the way of the heat exchange.”

“…I see,” Dale repeats. “That stands to reason.”

“I’m sorry, Coop.”

“No, don’t be. I don’t fault you for desiring to be warm and I’ll do my best to make it happen,” he promises.

It takes, in Dale’s opinion, entirely too long to reach Harry’s deer camp again. Once inside the small cabin Harry kicks off his boots and attempts to undress himself, but his fingers appear to be resisting his attempts to move them. Dale approaches.

“Here, let me help.”

He has, of course, had fantasies about undressing Harry. None of those existed in this context, hypothermia and possible frostbite, potentially a medical emergency. He stays professional about the process, but also caring, as much as he can be. He wraps Harry in towels and gets to work starting a fire. In approximately five minutes, there is a small pile of flames before him, which he’s feeding on slightly larger pieces of wood each time. He spreads a blanket across the floor like Harry asked and undresses down to his thermals and socks.

Apparently Harry wasn’t exaggerating earlier, because this is still too much of a barrier and they ultimately lie together under a second blanket, completely nude. It’s entirely for medical purposes. Dale continually reminds himself of that - he doesn’t need a terrible amount of help remembering, though, because Harry could probably set off a Richter scale at the moment. His hands are sheets of ice on Dale’s back, a sharp contrast to the blanket over them which is warmed by the fire.

“Are you improving?” Dale asks after a few minutes.

“Yeah, a little… my hands hurt.”

“They do?”

“All the blood vessels are opening back up in them right now.”

“How can I help?”

“By staying right where you already are.”

They lay there in silence again, only disturbed by Dale briefly getting up to tend the fire. He returns immediately and nestles himself against Harry, folding them together exactly as they had been before. Harry clings to him and needless to say if this was taking place under different circumstances he would enjoy it. Dale holds Harry close, warming him, hopefully also providing comfort. He feels fortunate that they can’t see each other’s faces, because he’s certain that something would be apparent in his expression to betray the fact that he’s absorbing these sensations, shamefully filing them away to rework them later into fodder for the shower. The texture of Harry’s skin, how he smells, the contours of his musculature.

“You thinking pretty hard over there, Coop?”

“Hm?”

“What’re you thinking about?”

“The way you feel,” Dale answers, unable to stop the words from leaving his mouth.

“Really.”

He tries to backpedal. “Well, considering the situation, it’s difficult to ignore.”

“There anything I need to know?” Harry asks in a teasing tone.

“Nothing that wouldn’t make you extremely uncomfortable,” he admits quietly.

“Okay.” Now his friend sounds a little nervous. That’s not a good sign. “Maybe I should start then.”

“Start what, Harry?”

“There’s a reason I asked you to come hunting with me, Coop… I…” Harry shifts a little, as much as he can with Dale’s weight pressing on him. “I kinda thought it’d be easier if there wasn’t anybody else around.”

Dale is surprised. He allows a smile to appear even though Harry can’t see it because their faces are turned away.

“Will you allow me to hazard a guess as to what you’re about to say?” he asks.

“Uh… sure.”

Dale rearranges slightly, enough to move his arm. He turns Harry’s face to his. He moves slowly, allowing more than enough time for a protest which never comes. Both of them close their eyes. Dale kisses him. Harry kisses back.

They speak between kisses, murmuring into each other’s mouths.

“How’d you know?” Harry asks.

“I was considering an identical course of action.”

A cold hand runs up his shoulder blade, not as cold as it was when they first lay down by the fire. Their kisses are deepening and Dale regrets that things can’t progress further.

“You’ve done this before.” It’s not a question.

“Yes,” Dale confirms. “I’ve kissed and been kissed by other men.” Frigid palms rest on the sides of his neck, but it’s not the temperature that draws a shiver from him. In fact he works to deliberately focus on that coldness because it’s helping stop him from getting an erection. “Harry, you’re still freezing.”

“Yeah.”

“And we should also talk about this, without rushing into anything.”

“…yeah, you’re probably right.”

Dale strokes the side of his face. “Are you alright with this idea? Do you have any discomforts or doubts?”

“Some people in town will be upset when they find out. I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to not do this, though.”

He smiles. “Good.” And kisses Harry again.

**Author's Note:**

> All my Twin Peaks fics can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&include_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=127943&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&user_id=Aaron_The_8th_Demon).
> 
> Comments are welcomed, encouraged, and greatly appreciated :)


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